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There’s always a certain kind of dread in a Mikael Haneke film. Perhaps it’s due to his willingness to explore some of the most shocking aspects of society, but I think it’s that he’s a master at using tension to make his audience uncomfortable — more so than most horror filmmakers. Haneke’s latest, The White Ribbon, seems to have taken its inspiration from Children of the Corn (or, more appropriately, Village of the Dammed) in the way he films children in a menacing light. No one in the film trusts them, and The White Ribbon is about the sickness of paranoia and how it turns a seemingly wholesome German village into what feels like a horror film.

Set in the years before WWI, the movie follows a land-owning Baron (Ulrich Tukor) and the townspeople who farm it. The fabric of this town starts to unravel as bizarre incidents begin to occur. A doctor is trampled after being thrown when his horse tripped on a deliberately placed tripwire along his daily route; the Baron’s barn is burned to the ground; a child is brutalized and left for dead in the forest. The townspeople are soon up in arms and everyone is a suspect, but the blame always seems to trickle down to the children.

This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2010.